Having got themselves back on the road so spectacularly over the past couple of years, noone is going to risk the wheels coming off the RHCP juggernaut just yet. Thus a pre-Christmas release blitz sees a Live At Slane DVD and this greatest hits, also bolstered by a limited edition discs of videos.
By concentrating simply on the hits, this admittedly expansive package has a slightly revisionist feel. Listening to these tracks of streamlined US rock you’d be hard pushed to remember that, for most of their career, the Chilis dealt in fairly crass funk metal. Thus everything pre Blood Sugar Sex Magik is reduced to just one track, ‘Higher Ground’ (leaving aside the superb ‘Knock Me Down’) – the (probably accurate) message here being that the band only reached their full potential when John Frusciante was with them.
While you can argue the toss about singles albums with most bands, in this case the approach serves the four piece well. It shows that the emotive, emotional streak of ‘Californication’ and ‘By The Way’ wasn’t such a surprise; the likes of ‘Under The Bridge’, ‘Breaking The Girl’ and sole Dave Navarro track ‘My Friends’ proving that it was just having to battle with crap like ‘Suck My Kiss’.
The later stuff still sounds wonderful, even after all those radio plays, and only By The Way feels less than properly represented, a mere two tracks not really doing their finest hour justice. What the hell, you probably have it anyway. The two new tracks ‘Fortune Faded’ and ‘Save The Population’ show that they’re not going to mess with the formula just yet and are OK if nothing startling. Not the whole story by any means but certainly the parts of it worth telling.